Chris Hedgcorth
STRUGGLING WITH PRAYER
Have you ever been in a season where it’s really hard to pray? Even as believers, we aren’t immune to these seasons.
Debra called me a few weeks ago, “Hey, Chris, I want to be sharing about prayer. Do you have anything for me?” I told her I didn’t have anything. So after a couple weeks go by, she asks again, “Chris, have you ever had a breakthrough in prayer?” As I was pondering that, I began to realize what had been going on in my heart, the last few weeks.
We just purchased a facility up on top of the hill that we’re going to call the Finding the Family Learning Center! We can’t wait to share more about this later. to talk more about that later. But the Lord had laid it on my heart that I was supposed to go up there and pray every day. He didn’t really say for how long, but He just wanted me to go up there and pray every day to seek Him. I just kept putting that to the back-burner, but also thinking about it often. I knew I needed to get up there and begin to make that a daily thing. But as I pray, I just feel like my prayers are falling flat… I felt like nothing’s going on and nothing’s happening. I was struggling with prayer.
But what I realized is that the enemy had been using that, to keep me from praying to Him. The enemy was whispering things in my ear, like, “Oh, you can’t even go up on top of the hill and pray for 30 minutes, you think he’s going to listen to you?” So when Deb asked me that question, “Have I ever had a breakthrough in prayer?” I told her no because I literally believed that for a moment because of what the enemy had been speaking to me, and which was not the case at all.
So I just said, “God, I can’t handle this! I know you’ve done all these things in my life…” I just began to think, “Lord, you met me here… You met me here… You’ve done this… God, this ministry wouldn’t even be here if you hadn’t answered this prayer…” As I did that, my faith, and my confidence in Him was strengthened.
A LAUNCHING POINT FOR MY FAITH
The first thing I can think of when He met me in prayer was when I was a very young Christian. I was working on a couple’s vehicle, and it wouldn’t start. They were in a position financially, where they couldn’t really afford to fix it so I went to work on it. After working on it and diagnosing it, I found out that the fuel pump was was bad in it. I remember that day that we prayed that the car would start and run because they couldn’t afford to fix it, and we didn’t have any extra money. All of a sudden, the fuel pump starts working! I’ll never forget that. That launched me for the next 20 years of my life – for believing God to do supernatural, crazy things like that. Even when it’s as simple as a fuel pump, where it wasn’t working to working. I don’t understand that, but it sure built my faith for the future and the things that He had for me.
It says in Ephesians 3:20 – “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, that he’ll give us exceedingly and abundantly more than we could ever ask for.” That’s been the pattern of our prayers all these years. When we first started praying about Finding the Family, we prayed for the room and space to be able to do it. We asked God for 5 acres… He gave us 50! We asked God for double-wide trailers out there for the families to live in. But instead, we have fully financed, fully furnished, quality homes. At the time, that’s all we could even imagine for ourselves, but He can do exceedingly and abundantly more.
MY BIGGEST BREAKTHROUGH IN PRAYER
I talked to the families a lot here about God’s character. When we talk about relationship, and why that’s important, we want to build relationship with the Lord – and we do that in PRAYER. As we talk to Him, and as He talks to us, and whispers to us, and nudges us, and and just as we sit in his presence, that’s how we build a relationship with Him. So when we go through tough times, even like I’ve been going through lately, we know, in reality, I can go to him because he’s my dad. He wants me to talk to Him, He wants to talk to me, and encourage me. He’s not saying, “I can’t believe that you haven’t been up on top of the hill praying to me.”That’s not his character at all! He’s saying, “Come on Chris, come do what I said. It’s going to be really, really good. It’s gonna be really cool if you just do what I said.” That’s the coolest thing about prayer for me is I get to spend time with my Creator and have communion with Him.
DEBRA: If that is the the one thing that our families walk away with from Finding the Family is that they can have a conversation with their Creator about anything at anytime. If they understand that, then we did well.